By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

GENERAL DESCRIPTION*Contemporary Linguistics* (first published in 1980) is anupdated introductory textbook with a wide coverage of linguistictopics as diverse in nature as phonology, syntax, semantics,psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. The fourth U.S.edition of the text is distinguished from its Canadianpredecessors in its new additions intended to meet the readers'needs in the States such as a chapter on native Americanlanguages, a revised chapter on sociolinguistics, and also anupdated chapter on computational linguistics. Core chapters, esp.the chapter on syntax, have been thoroughly revised to keepabreast with the latest developments in the relevant fields ofresearch. An expanded Instructor's Resource Manual with teachingadvice and answers to the chapter exercises plus 103 transparencymasters for the teacher's use accompany the text. There are 17chapters in the book each written by an expert or experts (13 intotal) on the topic. For each chapter objectives are set inadvance. A summary of the topics covered in the chapter, keyterms, sources, recommended reading, and questions and exercisesfollow the main text. There are also &quot;For the Student Linguist&quot;boxes at the end of 7 chapters. These are playful short essayswritten by students on the subject in question intended to helpthe reader to attain a deeper understanding of the topics understudy.

CHAPTER ONE Language: A Preview (William O'Grady)

The chapter begins with the specialisations the human species hasdeveloped in order for language to come into existence. Languageis viewed as a creative system with grammar as the mental systembehind it. The investigation of grammar is important because (a)all languages have a grammar, (b) all grammars are equal, (c)grammars are alike in basic ways, (d) grammars change over time,and (e) grammatical knowledge is subconscious.

CHAPTER TWO Phonetics: The Sounds of Language (Michael Dobrivsky)

The reader here learns about phonetic transcription, the speechorgan in human beings, vowels, consonants and glides as thedifferent sound classes and also how they ar produced.Suprasegmental articulation (including pitch, length, and stress)is also introduced with specific English examples. A number ofarticulatory processes such as assimilation, epenthesis, andmetathesis are described and exemplified.

CHAPTER THREE Phonology: The Function and Patterning of Sounds (Michael Dobrovsky and Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins)

Phonology is concerned with the sound patterns of a language andhow systematic phonetic variation in language comes intoexistence. The authors begin with the major units of phonologicalstudy, that is, features, segments, and the syllable.Phonological conditioning, complementary distribution, and alsophonemes and allophones are introduced next. The structure of thesyllable with specific examples from English is the other topiccovered here in detail. Major class features, manner features,and place of articulation features are introduced, too. Someadvanced discussion of the derivation of phonetic representationsfrom underlying representations with such examples asassimilation of [+nasal], feature spreading, and tonalassimilation concludes the chapter.

CHAPTER FOUR Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure (William O'Grady and Videa de Guzman)

The chapter begins the definition of the word as the smallestfree form. It also deals with morphemes, allomorphs, and morphsas the units of morphological studies. Common morphologicalphenomena such as compounding, affixation, and cliticisation andalso less common processes such as conversion, clipping, andback-formation are introduced afterwards. An advanced discussionof number, case, and tense comes next. How morphology andphonology interact (morphophonemics) concludes the chapter.

CHAPTER FIVE Syntax: The Analysis of Sentence Structure (William O'Grady)

In this chapter the reader learns about word categories, phrasestructure, X' categories, complement clauses, transformations,and deep and surface structures. Universal Grammar and parametricvariation are introduced with examples from English, Tamil,French, and Welsh. Case is studied as the interaction betweensyntax and morphology. A brief comparison of transformational,relational, and functional analyses concludes the chapter. Someminimalist notions such as Merge and economy constraint are alsointroduced here and there.

CHAPTER SIX Semantics: The Analysis of Meaning(William O'Grady)

Semantic relations among words (synonymy, antonymy, polysemy andhomophony) are briefly examined first. Then we learn aboutsentence semantics with specific reference to such terms asentailment, connotation, and denotation. Semantic features andhow the meaning of a word can be broken down into its components(componential analysis) come next. This paves the way for adeeper understanding of the conceptual system of language. Therelationship between meaning and syntax (thematic roles and deepstructures, Principles A and B of Binding Theory), and thatbetween semantics and pragmatics (presupposition, setting,information structure, conversational maxims) bring the chapterto its end.

Languages change in pronunciation, morphology, syntax, and alsolexicon and meaning. The chapter examines the systematicity withwhich such changes occur. Articulatory simplification, spellingpronunciation, analogy and reanalysis, and language contact areamong the factors that systematically change pronunciation in alanguage. With morphological changes brought about due tophonological changes, e.g. articulatory simplification resultingin dropping affixes that characterise grammatical relations, thesyntactic realities of a language such as word order changedrastically, too. Contact with other cultures and alsodevelopments due to technological advancements make lexical andsemantic changes inevitable. A review of the major techniquesemployed in the reconstruction of the earlier varieties of alanguage (the phonetic plausibility strategy and the majorityrules strategy among them) concludes the chapter.

CHAPTER EIGHT The Classification of Languages (Aleksandra Steinbergs)

The reader gets familiar here with different types of languageclassification, namely, genetic classification (classifyinglanguages according to their descent), typological classification(according to their structural characteristics), and arealclassification (according to the properties shared by languagesin geographical contact). The author focuses on phonological,morphological, and syntactic characteristics of languagesthroughout the chapter. She examines different language familiesand also phyla (macrofamilies) in such respects.

CHAPTER NINE Indigenous Languages of North America (Victor Golla)

The chapter classifies approximately 325 indigenous languages ofNorth America into more than 60 language families. Phonological,morphological, and grammatical characteristics of some of theselanguages are examined briefly.

Two complementary methods of data collection in L1 acquisitionstudies are (a) naturalistic approach in which the child'sspontaneous utterances are observed and recorded, and (b)experimental approach in which a task is designed to collectdata. The studies of the first type are usually cross-sectionalwhile those of the second type are longitudinal. The chapterfocuses on some of the findings of L1 acquisition studies of bothtypes. The developmental stages through which the child passes onher way to the mastery of pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology,and syntax are examined. The possible role of inborn knowledge inL1 acquisition, and also those of adult speech, feedback, andcognitive development are dealt with next.

CHAPTER ELEVEN Second Language Acquisition (John Archibald)

In this chapter the reader learns about the factors thatinfluence the content of L2ers' interlanguage and also how theyapproach the process of second language acquisition. Among thefactors affecting the process, the author focuses on the role ofthe first language, that of the second language itself, and alsothose of age, and individual differences. The development ofinterlanguage is reviewed in terms of phonology, syntax, andmorphology. Markedness and the Subset Principle are given specialattention. A review of the educational dimensions of L2acquisition concludes the chapter.

The chapter summarises a number of methods and techniques psycho-linguists employ in order to learn more about the way language-users process linguistic data: (a) the study of the slips of thetongue,(b) experimental methods involving lexical decisions andpriming, experimental methods concerning sentence processing suchas timed-reading and eye-movement experiments, and (c) the studyof event-related potentials produced by the brain whileprocessing language. A number of psycholinguistic findingsconcerning pronunciation, morphology, and syntax are reviewed. Anoutline of different psycholinguistic models of language such asthose of serial and parallel processing comes at the end.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Brain and Language (Gary Libben)

In this chapter we read about the anatomy and functioning of thebrain in general and also the techniques and findings of autopsystudies, brain imaging surveys, dichotic listening studies, andsplit brain investigations of language. Different forms ofaphasia (fluent, nonfluent, Broca's, Wernicke's, jargon aphasia,etc.) are described in reference to both the anatomy of thedamaged brain and the impaired function. The relevance oflinguistic theory to the studies of aphasia concludes thechapter.

Sociolinguistics--the study of language in social contexts--isconcerned with the question of how differing sociolinguisticnorms express one's social identity (the sociolinguistics ofsociety), or on the other hand, how social circumstancesdetermine the structure language of language (thesociolinguistics of language). The chapter shows how the formerfocuses on sociolinguistic norms, standard/nonstandard varieties,and language attitudes towards them while the latter is primarilyconcerned with the topics typically covered in such fields ofresearch as discourse analysis, the ethnography of communication,ethnomethodology (conversation analysis), and text analysis. Italso covers the major methods of studying these sociolinguistictopics such as indexing analysis, marginal analysis, and variablerule analysis. A review of the major sociolinguistic findings ofvariation (both regional and social) in the United States comesnext. A brief account of such varieties as pidgins and creolesconcludes the chapter.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Writing and Language (Michael Dobrovsky and William O'Grady)

The chapter gives a detailed account of a variety of writingsystems including logograms, pictograms, syllabaries, andalphabets, and where and how they developed through history. Thechapter comes to an end with a short survey of the relationbetween writing and reading in aphasics and children.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Animal Communication (Michael Dobrovsky)

The chapter deals with a variety of topics such as nonvocalanimal communication by means of scent, light, electricity,colour, posture, gesture and facial expressions, types of signs(iconic, indexical, symbolic, and mixed), the structure of signs,bee communication, bird vocalisation, and communication bynonhuman primates. It also focuses on specific experiments withanimals designed to test nonhuman primates for linguisticability. An outline of the design features distinguishing animalcommunication from human language concludes the chapter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Computational Linguistics (Judith Klavans)

The chapter covers a good number of topics in computationallinguistics like speech analysis and synthesis, natural languageprocessing, parsers and grammars, and machine-readabledictionaries. In addition to definitions and descriptions, thechapter gives an account of the major applications ofcomputational linguistics such as indexing and concordances(finding and identifying word occurrences, and also determiningwhich words occur near others), information accessing andretrieval, machine translation and automatic summarisation.

CRITICAL EVALUATIONI found this fourth edition of *Contemporary Linguistics* one ofthe best introductions to modern linguistics I've ever read.Almost all chapters are very good both in content andorganisation. Although CL is a work written by 13 differentauthors, the text enjoys full harmony and a very high level ofcohesion throughout the book. At the same time, it is flexibleenough in organisation to allow the instructor to teach the textin the order s/he wishes to. Chapters 2 and 3 (on phonetics andphonology) are particularly well-written, which (in my subjectivejudgement as I have not tried the text in my classes yet) helpsthe student to go through the challenging content of thesechapters as smoothly as possible. Chapter 5 on syntax is one ofthe most cleverly written chapters in the text, too: whilecomprehensive enough for an introduction to general linguistics,it avoids the unnecessary complications that are usuallythoroughly revised (if not banished for ever) before the novicelinguist has a chance to pick up the expertise needed to fullyappreciate them. I also recommend chapters 12 and 13 on psycho-linguistics and neurolinguistics for both their relativethoroughness and the interest they raise in the reader.

Like any other work, CL has its own shortcomings. The firstchapter of the text (though clear enough in content and style) isnot stimulating enough for a reader with little interest inlinguistics. Pragmatics has not been treated at the length andwith the depth it deserves. It would be fair enough to devote awhole chapter to this field of research. On the other hand,indigenous languages of North America are of less interest to thereaders of a first book on linguistics (at least to those outsidethe US) to be incorporated into the book as a whole chapter.Chapter 14 on sociolinguistics is unnecessarily detailed. Itstreatment of methods of studying variation (pp. 559-563) is notvery practical for readers with no background in researchmethodology and also too shallow for those with it! Finally, theconcluding chapter on computational linguistics is somehow boringand shallow (section 6 of the chapter dealing with the practicalapplications of computational linguistics being an exception) asthe author spends most of her time and space on defining thediscrete terms recurrent in the computational literature withoutincorporating them into a cohesive whole.

About the reviewer:Dr. Ahmad R. Lotfi is Assistant Professor of linguistics at theEnglish Department of Esfahan Azad University, where he teacheslinguistics to graduate students of TESOL. His research interestsinclude minimalist syntax, second language acquisition studies ingenerative grammar, and Persian linguistics.